Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Gives $25M to Fight Ebola

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced today that they are donating $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help fight the Ebola epidemic.

“The Ebola epidemic is at a critical turning point,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post this morning. “It has infected 8,400 people so far, but it is spreading very quickly and projections suggest it could infect 1 million people or more over the next several months if not addressed.”

Zuckerberg said Ebola needs to be controlled in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long-term global health crisis the world ends up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio.

“We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome,” he wrote. “Grants like this directly help the frontline responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more. We are hopeful this will help save lives and get this outbreak under control.”

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Thank you Zuckerberg. Now let’s stop the flights in from west Africa – no point bringing people in and then waiting for them to develop the symptoms. Our hospitals will be overwhelmed. Containment is the best strategy. Don’t go/don’t come back until this thing settles down. Peace.